Telling and Retelling Stories: Learning Language and Literacy

Young children are active participants in building
language and literacy skills. They learn as
they participate in meaningful experiences and
interact with children and adults, constructing
language during the process. Much of the
language children learn reflects the language and
behavior of the adult models they interact with
and listen to (Strickland & Morrow 1989). Adults scaffold
children’s language learning by providing a model that is
expressive, responsive, and enjoyable.
One way to enrich children’s language experience
is through the use of storytelling. Many studies have
shown that children build vocabulary, use more complex
sentences, and improve comprehension when
frequently exposed to stories. Egan (1986) explains that
we remember best in story form; he supports the use of
stories as a way of organizing curriculum for children.
The magnetic quality of the story is the universal power
to remember, entertain, teach, inspire, create, and know
(Raines & Isbell 1994).
Comparing reading aloud and telling stories
Reading aloud and telling stories are both effective
ways to share literature with young children and to support
language and literacy learning. But while story reading
frequently occurs in early childhood settings and is
valued as an important tool to enhance literacy development,
storytelling is frequently viewed as a frill and only
occasionally used in classrooms (Cooter 1991). Mallan
(1996) explains that the story and storytelling are essential
to human existence. The story told has distinctive
characteristics that make it an excellent technique
to foster oral language development and provide a rich
foundation for literacy.
The experience of hearing a story told is more personal
and connected to the listener. The storyteller can
maintain eye contact and adapt the telling of the story
to specificlisteners; a story reader usually follows the
text exactly and focuses her eyes on the words on the
page. The language of storytelling is often more informal
than printed text. Listeners, regardless of their
language skills or reading abilities, can understand the
story because it is communicated through words, vocal
intonation, gestures, facial expressions, and body
movement (Mallan 1997). For these reasons, storytelling
connects to the language of the children and thereby
has the potential for increasing their understanding
of the story.
Storytelling promotes expressive language development—
in oral and written forms—and presents new
vocabulary and complex language in a powerful form
that inspires children to emulate the model they have
experienced. Stauffer (1980) says that the function of
language is to communicate, and communication is the
main purpose of language. In the personal setting of
the storytelling environment, the storyteller’s language
and the story together establish a rapport that encour-
ages children to connect to the story using their own
language and experiences. The storytelling experience
assists children in generating stories and encourages
their dictation and story writing (Nelson 1989).

[...] As children become more confident in their oral
abilities and understanding of stories, they will want
to select new stories for telling. In addition to stories
about things they have experienced and the people in
their lives, children can use story collections and new
books to expand their repertoire.
Young children create visual images and use their
imagination to determine the story setting, characters,
and happenings. The story becomes
personally meaningful to them
because they have been involved
in the process. Children who are
emotionally connected to their
stories become motivated to master
the goals of emergent literacy. They
have the desire to communicate both
orally and in written form. In this
way, they share and preserve their
stories to revisit (Brand, Trostle, &
Donato 2001).
Young writers often draw their stories.
The storyteller is both authorand illustrator (Gillard 1996). Other children who dictate
the events to a teacher later draw, scribble, or produce
letters on the transcription. A familiar story serves as a
beginning framework for writing of stories and for later
original creations. Stories told include descriptions
of the setting, detailed information about the appearance
of the characters, and a clear sequence of action.
These add enriched language that can be reused and
variety in the rewriting of the story. Because stories told
frequently include a narrative, children also use this
more advanced element in the telling and writing of their
stories (McGee & Richgels 2000).
Αs children begin to communicate their stories orally,
they want to record their treasures, dictating to the
teacher or writing independently. They can read the
written versions to a friend or take them home to share
with families. The oral transcript consists of the words
the children used in their telling, which makes the story
an easy text to read. A collection of stories told in a
classroom and transcribed is a wonderful addition to
the literacy center, where children can “read,” enjoy,
Jerome is talking with a friend in the library area of his
kindergarten classroom. He begins, “I am going to tell you
a story… Once upon a time, there was an old man who
lived in a shabby house on a high, high hill. One day he
walked to the market to buy a fish for dinner. He picked out
an enormous grayfish and put it in his basket. On the way
home the enormousgrayfish jumped out of his basket and
jumped into a river and swam away. So the sad old man
went home with no money and no fish. His wife was not
very happy with him. She told him that if the fish jumped
into the river it must be magic. She told him to go back to
the river and ask the magic fish for a new house with two
rooms. And he did.”
This is the beginning of a very complicated storytelling
by a five-year-old boy. His story continued until the entire
Jerome’s Story
sequence, including five requests to the magic fish, were
related to his attentive friend. He even included the moral,
“The man went home and found a shabby hut—because
he asked for too much.”
Jerome’s complete story is over 500 words—a very fluent
retelling that clearly demonstrates hisdesire to communicate
his ideas. He included many of the conventions of
story that he had experienced when his teacher told “The
Magic Fish.” Last week Jerome heard the story for the first
time and this week it was retold. Today, Jerome became
the teller of the folktale, and soon he will be telling and writing
own stories.